Resources for Black History Month

I would have liked to get this out sooner, but I was having an amazing time at TCEA. That may have been my favorite conference of all time. Granted, I don’t have many to compare it to…but I had a blast and learned a TON.

Anyway – Black History Month is upon us and here are some of my favorite resources. Although most of these are geared to the secondary level, there are some great discussion questions in most of these that can be used at all levels. These would also be great teacher-resources for elementary teachers. Have a favorite resource not listed here, please share!

“Project C: Lessons from the American Civil Rights Movement” is a series of electronic field trips occurring throughout the Civil Rights fiftieth anniversary years of 2013-2015 that focus on the role of citizenship in a democracy through the study of historical events. The collection is available on PBS Learning Media. PBS LearningMedia is a FREE resource for teachers and students with some of the best educational content from NOVA, American Experience, Frontline and MANY more. Click here to learn more about PBS LearningMedia.

It would be wrong for me to highlight only one or two resources from this MASSIVE collection. Not only does this collection pull from LOC, but it also pulls from the National Park Service, the National Archives, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. If you want to use one of these resources with your students, be sure to check that the interactive doesn’t operate on Flash (otherwise, you’ll have an iPad compatibility issue).

“The Underground Railroad: Journey to Freedom is a “choose your own journey” style online game that incorporates 3-D experiences as students make a series of choices that affect their journey. Played from a first-person perspective, the game immerses students in the action as they escape from a southern plantation and head north toward freedom. Along the route, students make key decisions that will lead them to one of several possible outcomes.” (from the NatGeo website). Make sure you check out the Educator Guide.

You’ll need to create a free Newseum account before you can access most of the resources, but Newseum has some phenomenal content relating to the First Amendment, and in this case, Civil Rights. They just posted a new lesson called “What Don’t You Know About Civil Rights”. The great things about most of these lessons is that they’re typically available as a PDF download.

Looking for books on Black History Month? Check out this Pinterest Board I created with K-12 books.

Within each of these links are links to lots more resources. Hopefully you can find one that works great for your studies this month!